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| 1 | 90 | 179 | 269 | 358 |
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"Pity they can't shoot all these officials and get a new lot," remarked
Cossar with a sigh. But the time was too limited for anything
fundamental, and so he swept through these minor controversies,
disinterred what may or may not have been the station-master from some
obscure hiding-place, walked about the premises holding him and giving
orders in his name, and was out of the station with everybody and
everything aboard before that official was fully awake to the breaches
in the most sacred routines and regulations that were being committed.
"
Who was he?" said the high official, caressing the arm Cossar had
gripped, and smiling with knit brows.
"'E was a gentleman, Sir," said a porter, "anyhow. 'Im and all 'is party
travelled first class."
"
Well, we got him and his stuff off pretty sharp--whoever he was," said
the high official, rubbing his arm with something approaching
satisfaction.
And as he walked slowly back, blinking in the unaccustomed daylight,
towards that dignified retirement in which the higher officials at
Charing Cross shelter from the importunity of the vulgar, he smiled
still at his unaccustomed energy. It was a very gratifying revelation of
his own possibilities, in spite of the stiffness of his arm. He wished
some of those confounded arm-chair critics of railway management could
have seen it.
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